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Endless oceans?

Published 30 November 2011

From
Eric Kvaalen

In his review of Robert Laughlin’s book Powering the Future, Fred Pearce summarises the author’s view as “ultimately the planet won’t care much about our carbon dioxide emissions” because the gas will all end up in the oceans (1 October, p 46).

This is not correct. If we burn all our known fossil-fuel reserves and add the CO2 to the seas, the eventual concentration of CO2 in the air will be twice pre-industrial levels. Dissolution of carbonate sediment and reef by the lower-pH ocean that results from more CO2 can mitigate this by shifting the …